


circuit breaker - ohmic blaze

by phoceus



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Space, Androids, Edits Ongoing, M/M, Other, chabouillet and javert agree that it isn't, emotional manipulation but they're programmed emotions so is it really manipulation?, i don't know anything about computers and it shows, les mis in spaaaaaaaaaaace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26863720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoceus/pseuds/phoceus
Summary: If Javert had an opinion, it would be that the expectation that a machine seeks to perform its duty with maximum efficiency while also spending processor power on unnecessary imitations of biological life is an illogical one. If Javert had an opinion, it would be that a machine with illogical expectations placed upon it would never be able to meet those expectations.Javert does not, of course, have an opinion.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16
Collections: Sewerchat Anniversary Exchange 2020





	circuit breaker - ohmic blaze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/gifts).



It is nighttime, overcast, and the heavy clouds trap the glow from the city lights to bathe the river in a dirty orange. Tower block and crane lights reflect from across the water, jagged and shifting on the oily surface. The Inspector (designation: “Javert” INSP-757-24V, commissioned by the Administration 4039 days ago for policing and android oversight duties) crouches down beside a hulking form that lies, slumped and half-beached, on the silt bank.

It has been just over 38 hours since the Toulon dockyards reported the loss of one of their labourer androids. This is an unacceptable length of time for an investigation, they say, and are displeased, despite the Inspector's clear explanation as to the difficulties it is facing - specifically, as it cannot detect the labourer droid on the mothernet, it is probably lying somewhere with its head caved in, and thus its location cannot be virtually traced. The Inspector is having to track it down the old-fashioned way: following scrapes along walls of shipping containers, detecting chemical traces leaked into puddles and smeared on fences, analyzing security footage and probing droids' memories, and tracking tirelessly up and down the backalleys and bridges on foot. All of this is easily within its programming, of course, but takes time - more time than a clientele used to virtual tracing were expecting. The Toulon board have made their irritation apparent to Chabouillet, who in turn - well. Chabouillet has made it clear what he expects of the Inspector.

The Inspector is not accustomed to the displeasure of its superiors. It was not programmed to fail.

River water laps and sucks around the body. An HUD pop-up informs the Inspector that both are at 6.8° Celsius: the android must have been in the water for a while to lose its ambient heat. Another points out the overalls it wears have seen extended use, as the water-repellant fibres show signs of wear, and the polydenim is stained damp and dark. The Inspector reaches to tilt the body’s head back, and lays its fingertips across the shattered forehead of the droid. It can see the insulation foam and gossamer wiring inside the cranial cavity, tubes gleaming gunmetal grey. Lubricant is pooling where it shouldn't, running in a thin, viscous flow from a crack over its eyebrow and down its face, into its silicon ear and washed away by the greasy river. A scan reveals only flickering traces of electrical activity inside its neural retia, not even enough to return the Inspector’s ping. All things considered, reactivation seems unlikely. Pushing into its mind, it combs through the android’s fragmented systems until it finds the designation it was expecting - VJN-246-01J - and a legal owner - the Toulon dockyards. Success.

The report requires a viability assessment, and it pushes further into the android’s programming, concentrating, dismissing a prompt to puff air out of its nose - one of many mandatory subroutines designed to mimic human emotional responses and put humans more at ease, somehow judged as more important than the (albeit minor) loss to productivity from the reduction in available RAM. The circuitry of the VJN-246-01J has been rendered inoperative, it determines, through a combination of the blow to the cranium and the prolonged water exposure. As the Inspector probes down the body, its HUD highlights critical structural errors - damaged neural retia, heat-fused wiring from a biosupport meltdown in the abdomen, compounded by corrosion from a damaged lysis pump, system-wide valve failure - and records that the cost of repairs would exceed the cost of a new unit.

The Toulon board will not be happy, and the Inspector predicts they will request another meeting with Chabouillet before midday. Chabouillet will want to know why it did not find the android before it became unsalvageable. It schedules self-diagnostics to run during its overnight standby, so the Administration’s engineers will have the data and reports ready for them for its inevitable reprogramming. The report on VJN-246-01J has finished compiling, and the Inspector uploads it. Investigation successful.

Javert lets its fingertips fall away from the empty cranium, and the connection drops. It stands up and re-adjusts its coat over its shoulders. A collection crew are on their way, and the android will be taken, broken into parts, and recycled. Javert looks out across the river, towards the lights of the residential and commercial hubs of the city. The clouds hang low tonight, blocking out any glimpse of open sky, any glimmer of starlight that might be visible through the smog and light pollution. Unprompted, the Inspector thinks of its standby chamber, the wardrobe-sized storage unit lined with neutrostatic foam shaped to fit millimeter-snug around its chassis, pressed against the contours of its face in the absolute dark.

It blinks twice - another unnecessary subroutine - and dispels the image. Its memory core should not be pulling unrelated data fragments without prompting. Perhaps it does need reprogramming, after all. It logs the error and schedules a defrag run in addition to the diagnostics, and sends for an autocab to take it back to the Administration. It will be better after tomorrow.

* * *

Several months later, Javert is standing in Chabouillet's office, a respectful distance from his desk.

"Transferred? Why would you want to be transferred?" Chabouillet leans back in his chair. His leather jacket creaks, and his face is - unreadable, even to Javert’s social software, despite the clear illumination from the panel lighting.

This is a test, perhaps. "Monsieur, I cannot want anything, other than to serve.” Both of them know this. “Population and industry, and therefore android numbers, continue to grow on the colony planets. I have extensive experience in my function, and my programming is some of the best currently available. Colony life can be harsh, and I can be exposed to a wider range of environments than human security officers without harm. I believe I could be of some use.”

It does not say: I feel like the incessant smog smothers the night sky and my processors in the same way; that sometimes, in the fraction of a second between confirming standby and powerdown, the black of my eyelids looks like the unknowable, unending depth of space. It has logged these errors before, and they have been fixed, but no patch has ever banished them for long, and it seems - unnecessary to bring them up with the Secretary.

Chabouillet purses his lips. “I’m not sure the Administration will be happy about letting one of our prototypes leave the planet. You represent a significant investment, you know. We can’t have you getting scrapped during some dispute between colonials.”

Javert does know. Androids of its model are not uncommon, but many years have passed since it was picked from the ranks of its fellow security droids on Chabouillet’s orders, and the constant patching and upgrades since then have almost completely replaced any original parts.

Chabouillet has never explained why Javert was the unit he chose for his pet project, and the Inspector has never asked.

“Both as a prototype and a security officer, I exist to assist the Administration. It would be advantageous to discover how my systems function in a novel environment. Better units will be built in the future, improving on my flaws; this can only help with that aim.”

Javert's interpersonal subroutines have never been able to read the Secretary’s face. It is kept too smooth for its analysis grid latch on to. But - Javert thinks it sees faint approval in the line of his eyebrows. If this was a test, it has passed it.

Chabouillet quirks his mouth, and leans forward to pull up a file on his screen. He flips off the terminal opacity, making it visible from the other side of his desk. “As it happens, we were already looking for the right applicant for a slightly unusual posting.”

Javert blinks, optical units flicking to scan. The screen shows prefabricated, dusty buildings against a deep orange sky. A quick connection to the mothernet reveals that this is Montreuil-sous-Étoiles, 313 light years away, founded 15 months ago, with steady population growth and social metrics that are notably higher than the average for similar exocolonies. The main industry is manufacturing and export of mechanical and android parts - possibly this is why they have requested an android security officer - and the colony is run by one of its key industrialists.

It blinks, lenses clicking back, and looks visually at Chabouillet. The Secretary’s face is distorted and blue-tinted through the holoscreen, and there is a line between his eyebrows.

“I thought I’d told them to patch that thing with your irises.”

Scanning deactivates the faux-iris pigmentation of its optical units, revealing the rings of sensors below, to prioritise photon absorption. Some humans have reported this as disconcerting, which might harm trust in Javert and impede the performance of its duty. Javert’s own analysis says that the gains in performance and processing speed outweigh any potential human discomfort. Rapid collection of visual data has, on occasion, prevented it from being critically damaged. If Javert had an opinion, it would be that the expectation that it seeks to perform its duty with maximum efficiency while also spending processor power on unnecessary imitations of biological life is an illogical one. If Javert had an opinion, it would be that a machine with illogical expectations placed upon it would never be able to meet those expectations. Javert can hardly hide what it is, even if it knows some humans would rather not see it, or even if it wanted to, or even if it could want such a thing, or even if such a thing were possible.

Javert does not, of course, have an opinion. Inability to understand human demands is its own failing, not of humans, and it is a critical one. If a machine cannot achieve what it has been programmed to do, that is a sign of faults in the machine, not the master - yes, this is logically sound. It logs the error, and listens to its internal fans whirr. Perhaps it needs further reprogramming, before reassignment. It submits a request for a full system sweep tomorrow morning.

It refocuses on Chabouillet. Nearly a full second has passed - longer than acceptable to be processing and unaware - but the Secretary does not seem to have noticed, and has already dismissed this line of questioning.

“This place is doing really well. You’ll be aware that a lot of the newer exocolonies are, to put it mildly, going down the shitter. The Administration wants this one to be an example of what a new colony should look like, and-” Chabouillet pauses to lean around the screen, making sure Javert is holding his gaze and speaking with carefully weighted words, “- I believe you can make that happen.”

Javert knows that its need to meet the expectations of Chabouillet are coded, but so is the rest of its existence. The dopamine-analogue seeping through its neural retia may have been released as a programmed response to the words of a superior, but it produces an emotional hook equivalent to any biological one.

That night, it stands pressed in its standby chamber, and reflects as the standby prompt appears on its HUD. Tomorrow, it will report to maintenance for physical checks and system corrections. Afterwards, it will board a cargo ship, which will fly through the endless void of space to travel to a trade hub station, and from there, it will board another that passes through Montreuil-sous-Étoiles. Javert's preconstruction algorithms have no experience to predict what it will look like, but it finds itself trying anyway.

The standby prompt blinks impatiently, and Javert confirms it. The last image it sees is a dusky, terracotta circle, and all around it, the pure black of space, split by stars shining like LEDs.

* * *

REBOOTING….  
ANDROID INSP-757-24V  
BIOS 7.5.1  
REBOOTING….

SYSTEM ONLINE  
AI CORE ONLINE  
PHYSICAL MEMORY 23% FULL  
VIRTUAL MEMORY LOADING….  
PROCESSOR CORES ONLINE  
ALLOCATING RAM…..  
SOMATIC COMPONENT CONTROL LOADING….  
EXTERNAL SENSORS LOADING….  
DIAGNOSTICS COMPLETE: ALL SYSTEMS OPTIMAL

  
REBOOT COMPLETE

Javert opens its eyes. A hiss of static in its head, and then - crisp audio. Technicians move around its suspended form, disconnecting cables and talking together over tablets. Nobody pays Javert any attention now the procedure is complete, except the figure watching through the frosted plexiglass of the corridor window. In the side of its vision, code scrolls up its HUD, reporting a successful hard reboot.

Its fingers and arms flex, its neck rolls and spine twists in an involuntary motor check. Sensation re-enters its limbs as the robotic arms of the maintenance rig lower it to the ground, disconnecting with a quiet pneumatic hiss once its bare feet touch the floor.

The technicians never discuss their planned procedures with Javert beforehand, and this time was no different. It prompts its BIOS to run self-diagnostics, and learns that its AI core has been reformatted and patched, along with other minor upgrades. This matches 83.1% of past maintenance procedures. Reformatting its AI core allows more efficient allocation of processing capacity, and all but eradicates its tendency to get stuck in processing loops over past events. This is the primary purpose of maintenance: eliminating bugs and inefficiencies that emerge during prolonged runtime, and returning it to how it was designed to be.

A technician hands it a robe - an irrational action, as all the humans in the room and corridor are familiar with its appearance, and modesty is a human limitation - and tells it to get dressed and equipped, and report to the Paris starport in 93 minutes.

In the corridor, Chabouillet is waiting for Javert.

"All went well, I presume?"

Javert knows that the Secretary already knows this. He would have watched through the window, as he always does, to ensure his plan is enacted. He does not get involved himself.

"Of course. All persistent segmentation faults have been cleared, my AI core was successfully returned to manufacture settings, and I am functioning within optimal parameters."

Chabouillet steps closer, and plucks at the lapel of its paper gown with an expression it reads as amusement. His fingertips brush the synthetic skin of Javert’s chest. His fingers are faintly stained with a translucent grey. Scanning a superior is not permitted, so Javert does not.

“Check your locker before you go. I’ve got you something to wear… it should suit you quite nicely.”

He steps back and holds its shoulder, looking down the length of its body, and Javert can feel the human heat of his hand through the thin paper. When he looks up at Javert's face, there is something lingering in his eyes. Even with the additional RAM allocated to its interpersonal algorithms, Javert still cannot decrypt what lies beneath the Secretary’s quirked lips and pale gaze. It cannot help but keep trying.

“I’ll miss you, Javert. I really will." He pauses. "But I know you’ll do good work for us in Montreuil.”

He drops his hand, and his face is as smooth as ever.

“Dismissed.”

Javert turns and walks down the corridor. As the door to the stairwell swings shut behind it, it pauses at the sound of Chabouillet’s voice, following it down the corridor.

“Don’t disappoint me.”

**Author's Note:**

> if u want to imagine "oh no" by marina and the diamonds playing through all javert's bits, that would not be wrong.
> 
> to anyone who has mentioned anything relating to androids in the Sewers in the last two months: i have taken what you said and stolen it for my fic. thank you for the food.
> 
> this is, quite obviously, a first chapter of hopefully a few.


End file.
